Chapter 4 - Memories of Mara
The safe room was a concrete bunker hidden beneath the library.
It was stocked with supplies,
weapons,
and communication gear.
When I entered,
Elara was sitting on a cot,
clutching a blanket.
Phantom was lying at her feet,
his ears twitching at the sound of my footsteps.
He didn't growl.
He knew my scent.
He knew I was the provider.
“Is it over?”
Elara asked,
her voice small.
“For now,”
I said,
sitting on a crate across from her.
I took the pendant out and held it up.
“Tell me about the key,
Elara.”
She looked at the silver wolf.
“Mommy said it holds the map to the ‘Star of the North’.”
My heart stopped.
The Star of the North wasn't a jewel.
It was the name of my father’s secret ledger.
It contained the bank accounts,
the aliases,
and the dirty secrets of every politician in the country.
It was the reason our house was burned.
It was the reason my family had to die.
“Do you know how to open it?”
I asked.
She shook her head.
“Only Mommy knows the words.”
“What words?”
“The song,”
she said.
“The one she sang to Phantom when he was a puppy.”
I closed my eyes,
drifting back to a time when life was simple.
I remembered Mara in the garden,
her hair catching the sun.
She used to hum a melody that didn't have a name.
It was a haunting,
low tune that always calmed the dogs.
I tried to hum it now,
a few broken notes.
Elara’s eyes lit up.
“Yes!
That’s it!”
I looked at the wolf’s head.
The jaw was the mechanism.
I hummed the first few bars of the melody,
my voice gravelly and out of practice.
Nothing happened.
I tried again,
louder this time,
focusing on the rhythm Mara used.
On the final note,
there was a soft click.
The wolf’s head popped open like a hinged lid.
Inside was a tiny,
intricate piece of micro-film.
And something else.
A small,
pressed flower.
A forget-me-not.
I felt a lump in my throat.
Even in her darkest hour,
my sister was thinking of me.
“She knew I’d find you,”
I whispered.
Elara climbed off the cot and came to stand beside me.
She put a small,
warm hand on my arm.
“She said you were a giant,”
the girl said.
“She said the giants would come to save us.”
I looked at my hands,
scarred and stained with the blood of the men I’d just killed.
I wasn't a giant.
I was a monster who happened to love his family.
“We can't stay here,”
I said,
standing up.
“They know where this fortress is now.”
“Where will we go?”
Dr. Vale asked from the corner.
“To the only place they won't look,”
I said.
“To the ruins.”
The old estate in the mountains.
The place where it all began.
The place they think is a graveyard.
I looked at Phantom.
“Load the trucks,”
I ordered my remaining guards.
“We move out in twenty minutes.”
I turned to Elara.
“Can you be brave?”
She nodded,
squeezing her eyes shut for a moment.
“Phantom will protect me,”
she said.
“And so will you.”
I picked her up,
noticing how light she still was.
She was so fragile,
yet she had survived things that would break a man.
She was a Cross.
We were built of iron and spite.
As we walked through the house,
I saw the damage.
The bullet holes,
the blood,
the shattered glass.
This was no longer a home.
It was a battlefield.
And I was moving the front line.
I placed Elara in the back of the armored SUV.
Phantom jumped in beside her,
his massive body filling the space.
He looked at me with those amber eyes,
as if asking if I was ready.
“Let’s go,”
I said to the driver.
As we pulled away from the gates,
I looked back at my fortress.
I saw the smoke rising into the winter sky.
The Council would be back.
They would bring more men,
more guns,
more hate.
But they didn't have the map.
And they didn't have the girl.
And most importantly,
they didn't have the dog.
I opened the micro-film and held it up to the light.
It wasn't a map of roads.
It was a map of coordinates.
And they led straight into the heart of the capital.
May you like
Mara wasn't just hiding.
She was waiting.
